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2 INTERVIEW Of war,
loss and the politics of
poetry Farideh Hassanzadeh
Farideh Hassanzadeh
(Mostafavi) is an Iranian poet, translator and
freelance journalist. Her first book of poetry was
published when she was 22. Her poems appear in the
anthologies Contemporary Women Poets of
Iran and Anthology of Best Women Poets.
She writes regularly for Golestaneh, Iran News and
many other literary magazines and newspapers. Her
poems translated into English appear in Kritya,
Jehat, Interpoetry, Muse India, earthfamilyalpha
and Thanal Online. Her anthology of
contemporary American poetry
will appear this year. She spoke to Melissa
Tuckey.
Melissa Tuckey:
What role do poets play in Iranian society?
Farideh Hassanzadeh:
Our great poets like Hafez, Rumi, Saadi,
and Ferdousi
have the largest circulation in book fairs of
Iran, after our sacred book, the Koran. This means
poets, after prophets, rule the hearts and minds
of my people. To inspire confidence, politicians
recite poems by classic or modern poetry in their
speeches. During the imposed war between Iran and
Iraq, one journalist reported about the poetry he
found in the trenches and foxholes that survived
after the dead soldiers, poems like this from
Forough Farrokhzad:
Remember the flight the bird is
mortal.
And everybody knows that
one of the most important reasons why people
rebelled against the shah's regime was the
persecution and execution of a young poet, Khosro
Golsorkhi, who was a political prisoner. In
military court he refused to ask the shah for
amnesty and bravely declared: "I don't beg for my
life. I have always written for my people and I
defend only my people, not my own life."
My people never forgive the execution of a
poet. It is the execution of words. That is why
Federico Garcia Lorca is the most popular foreign
poet in Iran.
Tuckey: How do
people in your country learn such a deep
appreciation for poetry?
Hassanzadeh: In Iran, from
remote places to modern cities, in each house you
may find two books: the Koran and a book of
[14th-century classic poet] Hafez. People planning
to travel or to marry or to do business consult
with Hafez by choosing at random a poem from his
book. If Iran is still Iran and, after so many
foreign aggressors, has not yet lost his identity,
it is because of its loyalty to its culture.
My son, in his latest article, writes that
"losing the lands and cities in wars can't defeat
a nation. We Iranians know we must keep our
culture. The real borders of our country are our
culture." And one of the most vivid aspects of our
culture is the poetry of Hafez, Rumi, Ferdousi.
Khayam, Nezami, and of many other poets from
classic to modern.
Tuckey:
What is it like to be a woman writing in Iran? Do
women poets receive an equal amount of admiration,
support and respect?
Hassanzadeh: In recent
years, women writers have been more popular than
men writers, for they are better to able to
express the hidden realities of family and
society. Women writers like Roya Pirzad, Fariba
Vafi, and many others have won the most famous
literary prizes, and people buy their books in
spite of financial problems. The books of women
writers reach the 20th or 30th edition within a
very short time.
But as for poets, our
great poets are still Forough Farrokhzad and Simin
Behbahani from the 1940s and 1950s.
Meanwhile, among our great directors,
women like Rakhshan Bani Etemad, Samira
Makhmalbaf, and Tahmine Milany have achieved
international success and fame. And our best
playwrights have been women, too. Increasingly,
more women than men are studying in universities.
Tuckey: How has war affected
your life and your writing?
Hassanzadeh: Before war, my
poetry was not familiar with words like bombs,
alarming sounds, ruins and fears. The sky and the
beauty of clouds or the brightness of stars turned
into a terrible roof above me where bombs could
fall and explode all my dreams. Before war I used
to see the killed only on TV, in the news about
Palestine. I never was able to smell the warm
stream of blood shown in massacre reports. War
acted like a sleight of hand to make the distance
between me and the world disappear, beyond the TV.
It turned my first little son to a bird without
wings to fly, a bird good only to be buried
forever.
Tuckey: I am sorry
to hear about the loss of your son. How old was he
and when did this happen? How do you cope with the
loss?
Hassanzadeh: I almost
lost my second child, too.
On my way to
the hospital to give birth to my daughter Sufi,
Iraq bombed my city of Tehran eight times in less
than one hour. An old man who was looking at me,
big with child, shouted to the sky: "God! What is
wrong that this child must fear coming into this
world?" With each bomb the baby inside me tried
painfully to take refuge in a peaceful place she
couldn't find.
In fact, during the war,
instead of the doctor's protective hands, bombs
gave birth to many Iranian women's children in the
streets. In the past, soldiers targeted enemy
positions, but now they drop bombs on women and
children. My son, before he could experience the
fear of his first day of school, experienced the
fear of his last breath, his hands gone with the
bombs. He never tasted the joy of putting a pencil
on paper to write a word.
As for your
question: How did I cope with the loss? Honestly,
I could forget his death, but my feet, indifferent
to me, sometimes go to the place where my son was
bombed. All mothers of dead
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and Ferdousi
have the largest circulation in book fairs of
Iran, after our sacred book, the Koran. This means
poets, after prophets, rule the hearts and minds
of my people. To inspire confidence, politicians
recite poems by classic or modern poetry in their
speeches. During the imposed war between Iran and
Iraq, one journalist reported about the poetry he
found in the trenches and foxholes that survived
after the dead soldiers, poems like this from
Forough Farrokhzad:
